Computerized information gathering using such entities as the World Wide Web is based around the concept of "pages" of information. A page of information consists of any number of textual, graphical, audio/visual, or other elements (i.e. multimedia information) that are sent upon receipt of a request for that particular page by a computer connected to the network from a server computer that may serve as a host repository for many such pages.
The World Wide Web is an extremely-widespread information service that can deliver both text and non-text multimedia information (audio, video, graphics). The Web is a global hyptertext system. Hypertext is a computer-based protocol for linking documents to other related documents. Links are embedded within the text of a document in the form of highlighted words or images and, when activated, cause the linked document to be retrieved and displayed. The linked document can itself contain links to other documents, and so on, ad infinitum. Links are most commonly activated by pointing and clicking with a mouse.
A computer system may be attached to an information network, such as the World Wide Web, by means of a modem or other network connecting device. Often the user is connected not directly to the information network itself but to an interim computer (network provider) with a direct connection.
The user of the requesting computer may request a specific page by sending a specific page name (such as the Universal Resource Locator, or URL, on the World Wide Web) to the network. This name is interpreted and routed to the correct server, which places the requested page data on the network for retrieval by the requesting computer. As mentioned, a page of information may contain "links" (textual or graphical pointers to other pages of information) that are available to the user of the requesting computer. If the user selects one of these links, the name of the associated information page is then requested and the process continues as described above. In this way, the user of the requesting computer can navigate the information network, requesting pages as desired.
Examples of computers communicating over a network are given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,852 to Attanasio et al., issued on Dec. 6, 1994. A description of network configurations that are used to identify and search for information in databases in described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/677,059 to Brown et al, filed on Jul. 9, 1996, still pending. These references are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
The maximum possible speed of this interaction is determined by the bandwidth of the devices used to connect participating devices to the network, and to the bandwidth of the network itself. It may be noted that between the time that a given page of information is sent to the requesting computer and the time the next page is requested (i.e., while the user is viewing or otherwise using the page received), the bandwidth of the connecting devices is not being used effectively. Thus the effective bandwidth of the communication process is much lower than the potential useful bandwidth.